1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sheet supply apparatus which supplies a sheet, and particularly to improvements in a sheet supply apparatus available to supply a long sheet and in a sheet handling apparatus using the sheet supply apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, as a sheet handling apparatus, there is, for example, an electrophotographic type of image forming apparatus.
In this type of conventional image forming apparatus, an electrophotographic type of image forming engine is mounted in an apparatus body, an image is formed by the image forming engine, a sheet is supplied from a sheet supply apparatus to the image forming engine, the image formed by the image forming engine is transferred and fixed onto the sheet, and thereafter the sheet is exhausted to a sheet exhausting apparatus.
Here, there are various types of sheet supply apparatus such as a cassette type incorporated into an apparatus body or a manual type in which a sheet is manually supplied.
For example, as a manual type of sheet supply apparatus, a sheet supply apparatus has been already provided, in which one or plural steps of auxiliary trays is provided movably at a back end edge of a manual tray to secure a sheet placed surface on which even a rear end of a long sheet can be placed by the manual tray and the auxiliary tray, and the auxiliary tray is extendable for the longsheet (for example, refer to JP-A-2001-163454 and JP-UM-A-3-28145).
In this type of manual sheet supply apparatus, it is surely possible to secure the placed surface of the long sheet. However, a side guide for regulating a position in the width direction of the sheet is provided only for the manual tray, that is, only on a leading end side in the sheet feeding direction of the stacked long sheets, and the side guide is not provided on the auxiliary tray side.
Therefore, a position in the width direction on a sheet feeding direction rear end side of the long sheet is not regulated inevitably, and the stacked state of the long sheets on the manual tray and the auxiliary tray is unstable, so that there is fear that setting error of the long sheet or transporting failure (skew) of the long sheet accompanied by the setting error will be caused.